The nervous system takes as much as five to six times longer than the muscles to recover from an intense session. So by constantly going to muscle failure, you can overload the CNS so much that it becomes impossible to train with a high frequency.

Taking a set to the point of muscle failure ensures that this set was as productive as it can be. Remember, simply recruiting a motor unit doesn't mean that it's been stimulated.

You should do both! In fact, going to failure or not should be an exercise-dependant variable. The more demanding an exercise is on the CNS, the farther away from failure you should stop the set. However, in exercises where the CNS is less involved, you should go to failure and possibly beyond.

Thanks for finding that. I went and read the article itself, too, and it's followup.

It does seem to match a lot of prior work, too - that Westside/Russian/etc. approach of doing ME work not to failure, DE/Speed work until the bar slows down, and Accessory work to, to near, or past, failure.

Nice to see it put down by exercises as well, and it makes it clear what goes where in the ME/DE/Accessory split. Bicep curls are your accessories, never your DE or ME work, so you do them higher reps and hit failure more. Your speed benches, clean-and-jerks, snatches, box jumps, etc. are DE, so you stop when you slow down (or can't jump as high, for box jumps). Your deadlifts and squats and weighted chinups are ME work, so you do them until you've only got 1-2 reps left.

I wonder where isometric fit into this, actually. Do you stop short of exhaustion - treat it like ME work? Or is it an accessory, and not CNS-dependent, and stop at failure or later? I mean all sorts of isometrics, here - pushing a barbell against pins, handstands, hanging from a chinup bar in a front lever, etc. Is that CNS-frying or not, I wonder?

If you can't maintain good form, then you've reached failure. Likewise, if you can't complete another rep, that would be going to failure. If you don't have a good spotter on lifts like squats and bench presses then you may want to stop a little short of failure ... better safe than sorry.

would failure be a good thing to do and should it be done after u finished ur entire workout. What i mean is lets say u spent 45 minutes lifting and u wanna get in something extra, can u spend like 5 minutes doing whatever isolation workout out u did that day but this time go to faliure with it?

You mean do an isolation exercise (like biceps curl) to failure that you already did earlier in the workout (that is, you would do biceps curl twice)? That's not necessary. I think what the article is saying is that you can just go to failure on your first time with an exercise like that.

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